


What the Sirens Do to You

by Vampiresswolf



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Most everyone's a siren, Siren!Nico, Sirens, solangelo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 10:42:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5740648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vampiresswolf/pseuds/Vampiresswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His mother always told him Never, ever, under any circumstances go to the beach once the sun went down. Once the sun began to color the sky, and before it colored it once again, the beach went from the daylight lover’s paradise to the Siren’s deadly playground. He had heard stories, he had seen what could happen. Those who were unfortunate enough to frolic among the night washed sand, lost in the beauty of the night, usually returned only weeks later, their bloated corpses littering the cove. The beautiful sounds had been recorded on tape a multitude of times, the sweet, melodious tunes enchanting even through speakers until the recordings were outlawed. For the recordings had been known to bring men, women, and even children, searching aimlessly for the singers. Lead to the ocean and into the currents, on a deadly, desperate search of longing. The sirens would entrance you, lead you to your death, and return your lifeless body to the cove once they were finished with their games.<br/>That was if you were lucky. A majority of lost souls would wash up on the cove’s banks, leaving the families a body to mourn, to bury. If you were unlucky, you never saw your family, your friends, your coworkers again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**** Will knew what the sirens did to you.

His mother always told him  _ Never, ever, under any circumstances go to the beach once the sun went down. _ Once the sun began to color the sky, and before it colored it once again, the beach went from the daylight lover’s paradise to the Siren’s deadly playground. He had heard stories, he had seen what could happen. Those who were unfortunate enough to frolic among the night washed sand, lost in the beauty of the night, usually returned only weeks later, their bloated corpses littering the cove known as the Cemetery of Lost Searches. The beautiful sounds had been recorded on tape a multitude of times, the sweet, melodious tunes enchanting even through speakers until the recordings were outlawed. For the recordings had been known to bring men, women, and even children, searching aimlessly for the singers. Lead to the ocean and into the currents, on a deadly, desperate search of longing. The sirens would entrance you, lead you to your death, and return your lifeless body to the cove once they were finished with their games.

That was if you were lucky. A majority of lost souls would wash up on the cove’s banks, leaving the families a body to mourn, to bury. If you were unlucky, you never saw your family, your friends, your coworkers again. The clothes they had last worn would show up after weeks away, but the bodies never would. It would leave families torn and wondering what became of their loved ones. 

He would know, it had happened to his best friend. Cecil had been out with his brothers, Michael and Lee, after a late night game. Lee’s body washed up on the beach after two weeks, and a week later Michael’s had shown up, accompanied by Cecil’s clothing. It left him in tatters, his best friend was gone. He had no one else to lay his shoulder on, besides his mother and younger sister, Kayla, neither of which were in any shape to comfort him. He sat through three closed-casket funerals, one coffin which had no body, and two with the eldest of his siblings.

He never went to the beach once the sun went down. He wouldn’t be able to shoulder the memories, the guilt his ghost would feel should he leave his family without another of their children. 

Once he turned eighteen, he became a volunteer to bring in the bodies from the cove, to get over the deaths by helping those he could. Once he graduated high school, he headed to a nearby college, so that he could keep up with his volunteer work while studying he pre-medical studies needed to become a pediatrician. He never expected to see the eyes in the waters of the cove, during the daylight hours, where he was removing a small girl’s body, and three months later, after a particularly nasty accident with a boulder, knocked him unconscious as he was removing the body of a red-haired man which had wedged into an out-of-the-way corner, he never expected to wake to darkness. 

* * *

Will’s first sensation was one of pain, emanating from the base of his skull where he had hit it. He groaned, trying to roll over until he realized he had slipped in a rocky corner and was now wedged between the rocks. When he opened his eyes and saw only shadows, he swore his heart stopped beating for a moment. He closed his eyes, hoping against hope that when he opened them, this would all be just a dream. That when he woke, that song, that alluring, canorus sound that filtered into his pain-filled brain would just be a dream, that he would wake up with the sun rising, the birds chirping, and his comforters tangled among his feet.

He lay there only a little longer, until the sound became louder, and he could no longer deny its dulcet tones any longer. His pain seemed to be fading, nothing but the wordless music seeming to matter as he pulled himself up out of the stones to look for the voice. The song was haunting, speaking of pain, anguish, really, love, and every other emotion one could feel. He was reminded of the moment he realized he was bisexual, the moment he realized his brothers and his best friend would never come back to him. He felt, more than heard, as there were no lyrics, the love he felt surrounded by family, a promise and a hope of the future mixing in with every memory he had, all laced with a newfound light. His pain was acknowledged at the same moment it was swept away. He never wanted to hear that noise end. He wanted to drown in it. He didn’t notice himself crawling from his place among the jagged edges of the world, looking around him as he was led toward the mellifluous tune. 

He imagined that this is how one would feel drunk. His movements seeming detached from what his brain was screaming at him. His mind fuzzy, focusing only on the dark figure who sat hunched on a rock in the center of the cove. His mind picked up that this was where the voice beget, from that dark figure. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind a tiny voice of reason warned him not to go forward, warned him that he would die if he followed this song all the way to that boy, and he hesitated, but only for a moment, as the figure turned its bare torso into his direction and his eyes caught. 

He was beautiful. The planes of his face shimmering under the light of the moon. His hair was dark, slightly long, and flipped at the tips. The water seemed to not have affected its shape. The boy’s eyes were dark as midnight, blacker than onyx, and his tone was pale but somehow olive, as if he was of italian descent, which Will’s brain supplied was impossible, as sirens did not come from the human world. 

Will’s eyes traced lower, over the planes of his toned torso, specked here and there with scars, until reaching to where the skin transformed. Gradually epidermis turned to scale, sinking at a waistline into an aquatic tail the color of pitch. it lazily circled in the water, creating ripples in the otherwise still surface of the cove. When the tail disappeared into the water, Will’s gaze travelled back to the face, to the thin upper lip and the full lower lip, perfectly parted to allow the sounds to emit. When his eyes alighted on the siren’s, he was transfixed, the warning voice in the back of his mind having been muffled by the perfection sitting in front of him. 

The song ceased, and Will’s heart beat as a sad, wicked smile replaced it on the boy’s mouth. He lifted a hand, lazily gesturing in a ‘come hither’ motion, and then the boy dived out of sight. 

Will panicked. He couldn’t live without that song, and so he dipped below the surface of the water, searching out the boy. A flash of scales lured him deeper out to sea, where he was caught in the undertow just off the edge of the reef. His brain was muddled, his heart was yearning, and his lungs screamed for air, but he just continued to follow the siren deeper and deeper, until only the moon’s slight shimmer far above allowed him to see. 

The siren suddenly turned, swimming to him, and had they not been underwater, he would have sworn that the boy was about to cry as the last of Will’s air was released and his lungs opened for air that was not there. His mind screamed, crying as it realized he had done the one thing he had sworn not to do. He had left his parents and sister alone, had been caught by a siren’s call, and he hoped his body returned to them soon.

The last thing he knew before his world turned dark was strong arms catching him and propelling him deeper into the water. 

Will didn’t expect to wake.


	2. Chapter 2

Will didn’t expect to wake. 

So when he did, he was confused. The first thing he felt was sore. He was sore all over, especially at the base of his skull, and for some reason, his left wrist. His body felt like it had gone through a meat grinder a couple of times before being pounded back into a vaguely human shape.

_ Is this what being dead feels like?  _  He wondered. If so, it was the worst sort of afterlife he could possibly imagine. Weren't your earthly pains supposed to magically disappear once the body was gone? 

Was his body gone? How would he know? He sure  _ felt  _ alive. But that was impossible. He distinctly remembered passing out so far below the surface of the ocean that there would be no way he'd have made it all the way to the top before having died. He tried remembering why he had been in the ocean at all. He remembered fishing for a body. He remembered slipping on the rocks and he sort of remembered waking up, though that memory was a little fuzzy, to be honest. And the siren…

He froze. He had followed a  _ siren.  _ He was so stupid! 

As he began to curse himself, he remembered the arms that had encircled him at the moment he fell unconscious. Why would he be alive? Had the siren decided he wasn’t good enough and returned him? Will shifted, groaning and opened his eyes. 

He promptly squealed, a sound he would later deny ever uttering. Hovering above his face, eyes crinkled in concern, were dark gold-brown eyes, surprisingly kind, set in a dark chocolate face. Ringlets framed the face as the girl spoke, her voice honey to his ears. 

“Are you alive?” The face was suddenly accompanied by a warm, moist hand reaching out for his arm to check his pulse. He jerked backwards when he realized there was a dark crest,  _ Fins,  _ his mind supplied, adorning the bend of the elbow, “I won’t hurt you.” The voice said, reaching out a little more forcefully this time and capturing his wrist. Her lips moved, silently counting, before she nodded, once, and sat back. 

He took in the rest of her. She wore a silky purple shirt that seemed to move on its own, and nothing below her waist, as a dark golden tail poked out from the shirt to disappear in the glittering water below him. In the dim light, he could make out that they matched her eyes in a way that was pretty enchanting. This close, he could see the edge that accompanied the tail. Rather than soft lines, there was a strong ridge, below which he could tell sharp spines could protrude. There was a belt at her waist, a dagger settled among a sheath on her hip. 

“Nico’s going to be so happy you woke up!” the siren continued, and he frowned, looking around the cave to where she was pointing, “He’s been here since you arrived, fell asleep not so long ago. He’s never called before. I was so worried you’d die. He’s already been through so much, he’d probably never get over it!” 

Wills eyes alighted on a body curled up on another coral bed similar to the one he realized now he was laying on. There was the one that had brought him away from his family, to certain doom. 

And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to hate him. He looked so peaceful sleeping there. His face was scrunched as if warding off a bad dream, his mouth slightly open to show surprisingly rounded teeth. His arms were curled under his head, and his ridged tail slipped over the edge of the cot to sink into the water. There was a deadly looking black sword resting crooked on his hip and his hair was adorably ruffled.

Will mentally slapped himself. This monster stole him. He was part of a species that killed thousands on a monthly basis. He was not  _ adorable. _

And yet, Will couldn’t stop looking at him. Maybe he was still entranced by the song that was only a memory at this point. He processed that the female siren was still talking, something about his clothes and how he could still possibly die, when he caught sight of the wrist that ached.

His eyes blew wide. Encircling his wrist were what he could only describe as teeth marks. From where, he was uncertain, but they hurt. He gasped and pulled it close, looking at it under the light the cave offered. 

“Oh. Yeah, that’s the Bite. It should go away.” He looked up at the girl in confusion,  _ Hazel,  _ he reminded himself, the name filtering into his brain from the conversation he had only been half listening to, “It’s what transforms you. You’re already almost there.” She nodded to his waist and he frowned again, mind incapable of processing what he was seeing. 

His legs were fused together. Not just stuck as though glued, but legitimately  _ fused.  _ there wasn’t even a seam. 

He screamed. What else was he supposed to do, after all? His legs were no longer legs. His feet were splayed out and more flipper-like than foot-like. He had a reason.

The sound woke the siren, and as Will continued to hyperventilate, Nico rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and turned toward his sister. Will caught them conversing, the boy sounding overly concerned as the girl smiled, trying to reassure him that nothing was wrong.

“Nothing’s wrong? nothing’s  _ wrong?!  _ My legs are gone! What have you things done to me?” Will found his voice, and the black-finned siren flinched, face remorseful, as will continued to scream at them, blame them for everything that had gone wrong so far in his life. Under his panic, he realized his voice had a new, lilting tone in it.  _ I have to get out of here.  _ Will’s only thought filtered like a mantra as he desperately searched for the cave opening.  

“It’s below us.” Hazel supplied, and he looked down, into the water. Before he could push his way past the sirens and into the water, not even concerned about how exactly he would escape with fused legs, let alone how he would explain this to his parents, the girl pushed him back. The boy still sat, hunched and looking rightfully guilty, as she continued, “You can’t swim until your scales grow in. Even if you tried the last part of the transformation are your gills. You’d die before reaching the surface. Plus,” She smiled at him, as if she wasn’t destroying his entire livelihood with every word, “It’s daytime out there. The humans wouldn’t even ask if you used to be one of them. They’d just kill you as soon as they saw your tail. You need to keep it wet once you’re done transforming, which shouldn’t be long now. the moment you try to remove yourself, you’ll get sick.” Will watched her, his stomach curling in on itself, as she demonstrated, pulling her tail- which was ended in a magnificent fan he’d only ever seen on fancy goldfish, from the water. The moment it hit the air, she retched, falling forward in her illness and into the dark water below. Her head popped back up out of the water and she smiled as she shimmied back to her original seated position. 

“You’re stuck here whether you like it or not. The fact that you can understand us means you have lost your human speech. They wouldn’t be able to understand your words anyway.”

Will gaped at her, and suddenly it was just all too much to handle, and he flopped backward with a defeated groan, looking at the roof of the cave, and let the tears flow freely, for it was all clear now.

Will knew his life was over.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah yeah, I show up once in a million years with a story. This one's actually going to be finished though. 5 chapters, that's it. I have them written already. =] I am not abandoning my other stories, I just haven't gotten to them yet, and for that I'm really sorry. But here's a little one that I will update and finish quickly, cause like i said, its already written. =]


End file.
